“People who plan their own funeral, they’re not grieving, there isn’t the shock of loss. So they spend half as much money.”
“Well, the vet will be pleased!”
“In the funeral business, it’s forbidden to forbid. But I do advise families against attending exhumations.”
“Did you see it? That second goal, a masterpiece . . . Straight into the top corner.”
“We must preserve a nice image of a person we’ve loved. It’s hard enough to lose a loved one, to bury them . . . Fortunately, embalming has improved a great deal. Nine times out of ten, the result is really very attractive, the person appears to be sleeping. I apply a little makeup, so the skin looks natural again, I dress them up, and I use the deceased’s usual perfume, which I request from the family.”
“Don’t know, have to see, maybe the cylinder-head gasket. If it’s that, it’ll cost an arm and a leg.”
“It’s serious, but not very, very serious, because I know what serious is now. Two weeks ago, I ripped the fender off the hearse, broke my phone, had leaks in the house—it’s annoying, but it ain’t serious.”
“The other day, that Elvis, he opens the door of the technical office, and he comes face to face with the boss, that Darmonville, who was having it off with Mother Rémy. Sorry, Father. That Elvis, he about-turned and legged it.”
“Tell people we love them, make the most of them while they’re alive. I think I have more joie de vivre now than before. A perspective on things.”
“Love me tender . . . ”
“I’m not saying one should become a cold-blooded creature. I understand grief, but I’m not grieving. I don’t know the deceased.”
“It’s harder when you have memories of the deceased. When you’ve known them personally.”
40.
My grandmother taught me early on how to pick stars: at night, just place a basin of water in the middle of the courtyard, and you’ll have them at your feet.
I went to Mr. Rouault’s office to ask him to stop everything. I told him that he was probably right, that Philippe Toussaint had disappeared, that we’d leave it at that. That I didn’t want to stir up the past anymore.
Mr. Rouault didn’t ask me any questions. He phoned Mr. Legardinier in front of me, to tell him to stop proceedings. Not to follow up on my request. Today, whether I’m called Trenet or Toussaint really doesn’t matter. People call me Violette or “Mademoiselle Violette.” The word “mademoiselle” may have been erased from the French language, but not from my cemetery.
On my way home, I stopped at the tomb of Gabriel Prudent. One of my pine trees was giving shade to Irène Fayolle’s urn. Eliane joined me, growled something, and then sat at my feet. Then, from nowhere, Moody Blue and Florence appeared, rubbed up against me, and then stretched right out on the tombstone. I bent down to pet them. Their bellies and the marble were warm.
I wondered whether Gabriel and Irène were using the cats to give me a sign. Like when Léo went on the steps to wave at the passengers in the trains. I imagined the two of them, when Irène had returned to Gabriel at Aix station. I wondered why she hadn’t left Paul Seul, why she had gone back home. And what her final wish, to rest beside this man, really meant. Did she imagine that, although they hadn’t had a life together, they would have eternity? Would Julien Seul return to tell me the rest of this story? These thoughts led me to Sasha, toward Sasha.
Nono turned up beside me.
“Dreaming, Violette?”
“If you like . . . ”
“At last, there’s a client at the Lucchini brothers’.”
“Who?”
“A road-accident victim . . . in a bad state, apparently.”
“Who is it? Did you know him?”
“No one knows who he is. He had no papers on him.”
“That’s strange.”
“It’s the guys from the council who found him in a ditch, apparently he’d been there for three days.”
“Three days?”
“Yes, a biker.”
In the funeral chamber, Pierre and Paul Lucchini explain to me that they are waiting for the police requisition order. In a few hours’ time, the biker’s body will go to Mâcon. The pathologist had put some forensic obstacle in place so an autopsy would be carried out.
Like in a bad TV series, with bad lighting and bad actors, Paul presents the body of the victim to me. Only the body, not the face. “There’s no longer a face,” Paul says. He also says that he doesn’t have the right to show me the deceased.
“But for you, Violette, it’s not the same. We won’t mention it. Do you think you know him?”
“No.”
“Why do you want to see him then?”
“To be totally sure of it. He wasn’t wearing a helmet?”
“He was, but he hadn’t fastened it.”
The man is naked. Paul has placed a cloth on his genitals and on his head. The body is covered in bruises. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a dead person. Usually, when I deal with them, they are already “in the box,” as Nono puts it. I feel unwell, my legs buckle, a black veil falls over my eyes.
41.
The earth conceals you, but my heart still sees you.
On January 3rd, 1993, Mother Toussaint gave me a brochure before she left. Anaïs was Catherine’s friend (my mother-in-law never called Léonine by her real name), she was the daughter of “very nice people” they had befriended during their holiday in the Alps. The father was a doctor, the mother a radiologist. When Mother Toussaint said the words “doctor” or “lawyer,” she was ecstatic. Like me when I swam in the Mediterranean with a diving mask. To her, “frequenting” doctors and lawyers was the pinnacle of happiness.
Anaïs was in Léo’s skiing group. They had gained their first stars together. By happy coincidence, Anaïs’s family lived in Maxeville, near Nancy.
Every year, little Anaïs went on holiday to La Clayette, in Saône-et-Loire, and it would be nice if Léonine went with her in July. Anaïs’s parents had
